This site is fifteen years old today! It’s still kicking, and though the updates are still infrequent, my figure purchases continue unabated, as the photo above attests – most of the figures contained in the boxes haven’t appeared on this website yet.
2023 was an odd year for me, but I think I’d say it was quite a happy one. After a period of uncertainty regarding my job, I’ve fell (in a rather unplanned manner) into a really good situation, taking a role I like with colleagues whose company I enjoy very much, and I get paid way more than I probably deserve. It’s also the year that I knew I was no longer in love with Epic Seven, the game I’ve been playing for a large chunk of the last five years.
I also managed to procrastinate for an entire year on building a new computer:
I really do want to put the machine together since there are a lot of games I want to play that won’t run on my current computer. I’m not sure where I’m going to find the time, however, since I’m now a degenerate, inveterate gacha game player. Here’s a few of the ones I play regularly:
Azur Lane was the first gacha game I ever played and I think I would say it’s the one I’m most fond of, even though I don’t actually play it that much these days. I’m very glad to see that it’s getting so many figures, and I’m particularly happy that the Eagle Union – my favorite faction – is getting a lot of stuff from Alter and Apex.
Epic Seven is still the game I play the most, but I regard it with mixed feelings, much the same way as I felt about World of Warcraft when I knew it was about time to quit. There’s still a great game in there, but inexcusably poor unit balance and a general lack of content have me wondering how much longer I’m going to stick with it.
Strangely enough, the same company that publishes Epic Seven also publishes a game called Outerplane, which is incredibly similar to Epic Seven. It might seem incongruous that I’m playing an Epic Seven clone at a time when I’m contemplating quitting Epic Seven, but I find that Outerplane’s early and mid-game experiences evoke a lot of the positive feelings I had for Epic Seven, before I become jaded about it. The character designs are also pretty good in that they lean very heavily towards the waifu side of design philosophy.
If I could only ever play one gacha game, it might be Counterside. Unfortunately the game isn’t particularly well-known, but I hope it finds more success in the future. In particular I wish it would get some figures, since I really like the character designs, but it seems like it’s not that common for Korean games to get figure adaptations.
I still technically play Arknights, but I admit that I’m terrible at tower defense and I almost always have to go look for a Youtube video on how to beat a stage. However, Arknights did contribute one positive thing to my outlook on both itself and my view of figures; anyone who might have looked over my figure collection might notice that I own very few with animal ears or tails, and that’s by design as I’ve generally not liked those things on anime girls. However, having played Arknights for a while, I think I’ve mostly gotten over that dislike.
2023 was also the year that I believe I spent the most money on figures, and being that this site is still a figure website, here are some figures that I’ve photographed but haven’t yet completed their writeups.
Year 15 so where is Tier’s Man Cave Tour ? no way those boxes all inside right XD I expect 15 detolf full of figures
Ahahahaha, hopefully I can such a post this year – which is to say, I really hope this is the year I can buy a house. I’m not that hopeful but if I can, maybe I can actually show most of my figures in one place.
I resonate with your feelings on Epic Seven. I was at the brink not too long ago, and I’m still balancing poorly on the edge.
I’m looking forward to reading your upcoming figure reviews.
Thanks! 😀 Yeah, I’m not feeling too positively about the game, and neither are a lot of my friends. There’s not a lot there to feel positive about, which is a huge shame since so many other gacha games appear to be doing very well. Not to mention that there’s a ton of really good non-gacha games being released.
Also, thank you for hitting your expos 😀 So many people post their expos without hitting them and I just delete them.
Damn, we’ve been in this hobby a similar amount of time, and you’re the one that got me into it, for sure. It has been an interesting 14-15 years.
Man, it has; it’s kinda funny looking back at my dakimakura collection and thinking about what characters and series I liked back then versus what I like now. Or what I was willing to pay for them; I seriously never expected to commission one myself. I ought to write a post about that.
I was influenced by friends to play gacha games.
The three I am still play right now are Monster Strike, FGO and Nikke.
Problem with these games is the ‘fun’ is not really from the game play. I found my fun in these games from getting good characters without paying while seeing my friends spending hundreds/thousands trying to get them, very toxic.
My self control for not paying comes from knowing that I don’t actually own anything. When the server shuts everything is gone.
This problem has extended to affect PC games as they are now mostly ‘online only’ as well.
I have also started playing board games and card games (damn one piece is a money sink) however, still nothing beats unboxing a new toy, posing (i mostly do action figures) taking photos etc.
15yrs is a long time but I guess certain things just can’t be replaced doesn’t matter how technology advance and changed our daily life.
Congratulation for your new job. Hope to see reviews of those figures soon.
Yeah, I still really like collecting physical things, too. It brings me a lot more happiness than buying digital files; I like being able to look at things on a shelf. That said, I guess I don’t have a problem with spending on gacha games as long as I’m not spending excessively, but I still prefer not to, since it doesn’t bring me much happiness for the money. Even though I play a bunch of gacha games, I don’t think I spend very much on them (recently, I’m spending the most on Azur Lane skins; I like Azur Lane a lot and I don’t mind supporting the developers there).
Just dropping by to say Happy 15!
I still lurk the site from time to time but I’m glad you’re still going. I’m always impressed by your photography skills.
It’s really been that long? I remember stumbling on this site after following a site called Foo Bar Baz. I starting reading a few months after your debut. I used to be glued to Danny Choo back in 2008. Man. Time goes fast.
And after spending a little under $20K on Azur Lane, may it reign eternal!